Jimothy the raccoon has a rare spinal condition. Here's what that means

Summary

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our . You may unsubscribe at any time. You’d have to be living under a dumpster not to have heard of Jimothy, Seattle’s favorite raccoon and the internet’s newest folk hero. He’s inspired nicknames like ‘King Jimothy,’ as well as fan art, tattoos, and even his own meme, ‘Hot Jimothy Summer,‘ after racking up millions of views this month. Beyond the basic masked bandit cuteness of his species, Jimothy has become a sensation largely thanks to his compact, adorably round shape, the apparent result of a rare condition called short spine syndrome. Jimothy first turned up near a Goodwill store in Ballard, Washington. “I initially thought I saw a cat under a car and wanted to have a closer look,” Kiana Hall, the Seattle resident whose video introduced Jimothy to the world, tells Popular Science, “then realized it wasn’t the shape of a cat at all.” It wasn’t until Jimothy turned around that Hall noticed his telltale markings and realized he was a raccoon. As for the origin of his unusual name? “He just looked like a Jimothy to me,” says Hall. Online, commenters have since compared Jimothy’s unusual appearance to a cryptid, evoking everything from Bigfoot to the chupacabra. It’s Jimothy’s world, and we’re all living in it, but his fame raises some real questions about what causes short spine syndrome, why it’s so rarely documented in wild animals, and what it might mean for Jimothy’s future. So what exactly is short spine syndrome, and how did it leave Jimothy with that unmistakable, highly lovable, no-neck silhouette? What’s wrong with Jimothy? Why does he look like that? Short spine syndrome is a rare genetic condition, says Julian D. Avery, an ecologist at Penn State University. A faulty recessive gene causes the c...